A Future Home

A Street View of Our Future *Temporary* Home in Bolivia!

Well God certainly does provide, and when He does so, he does it lavishly~!

Our team in Bolivia jumped on an opportunity for us to sub-rent a home in Santa Cruz while a missionary family is on a four month leave back to the United States. Although this does mean that we will have to move (again) to our own place in January, it gives us an incredibly beautiful and comfortable home in which to stay while we get orientated to the field. We will move in as soon as we arrive on September 3rd, and will be able to take our time finding our own place to live for the rest of our term. We will be moving into a fully furnished and equipped home, complete with a large back yard (Jason's estatic), a gardener, a guard at night, an empleada (maid) to help around the house on 3 mornings a week, internet set up, phone set up, and best of all- much to our delight- a dog and a tortoise to keep us company! Yes, we will have to pay rent and salaries for all of these luxuries, but it is such a blessing to be able to make our transition a little smoother, to give us time to check out the best places for us to stay afterwards, to set up our home, to wait for our things to arrive by mail, to look for the best deals. I am excited. We are excited! Things are coming together and starting to feel more real- especially after almost 3 years of preparation time!

Check out the photos of our future, temporary, home:

This is Roger- their pet (red foot?) tortoise- We will be taking very good care of him. Tortoises are my favorite.

This is Beethoven (yellow) and Jerry (black). We will just be taking care of Beethoven and I believe the missionaries are working on finding someone to take care of Jerry- the Rotweiler. If they can't, I'm sure we'll take him under our wing as well, always nice to have good guard dogs. :-)


A view of the living room/ front door?

Kitchen with lots of counter space!! Yay!!

Dining room- very pretty


I'm sure Jason will have lots of fun planting all sorts of random, but yummy things in this yard. I'm sure he will also include a compost pile :-)

Office area- I can't wait to read some of those books!

As you can very well see, this place is huge and so far above and beyond any expectations we had! Not to mention the perks that come with it! Who else would be so happy to take on a tortoise? (Let alone know how to take care of it!) Like I said, God is very good. :-)

Arenal Volcano

Jason & Jenna in front of the smoking Arenal Volcano

Last weekend we made our long anticipated trip to Arenal Volcano along with Jenna's brother Kyle and a bunch of people from our school. It was a welcome 3 night getaway from the stresses of language learning. We enjoyed hot and cold pools along with a few water slides all fed by natural springs at the foot of the very active Arenal volcano. Whenever the clouds parted we had an excellent view of the volcano from our hotel and the constant stream of smoke from the top. Occasionally we would hear a rumble from deep within its belly. One night we took a van to the other side of the volcano where the lava is currently spewing. It put on a nice little firework display for us while we fought off mosquitoes.

Arenal Volcano at Night

This week was also a little bit of a breather from the routine. It was spiritual emphasis week. This week the teachers were not permitted to give us homework so that we could feel free to go to the two chapels a day and focus on spiritual health. Last weekend and this week was a nice break, next week it is back to full steam ahead. Classes continue to go well as I learn to speak Spanish poco a poco. My one class has been especially good for me since it requires me to get out in the community and build a relationship with 8 people with whom I talk to on a weekly basis. It continues to be a stretch for me but it is great practice. !Vale la pena!

Green Basilisk (Basiliscus plumifrons) at Arenal

Harlequin Long-Horned Beetle (Acrocinus longimanus) at Arenal